ICE invades Minnesota and Minnesotans fight back

Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor turned independent journalist, was arrested on Thursday night by federal agents in Los Angeles, who alleged that he had violated federal law while covering an anti-ICE protest in Minnesota.

Notably, Lemon was not the only journalist targeted by law enforcement for their presence at the Minnesota protest. On Thursday night, local independent journalist Georgia Fort told her followers that the FBI had come to arrest her for being at the protest, livestreaming as agents were demanding she open her door. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed Fort’s arrest the next day, claiming that she, Lemon, and others were part of a “coordinated attack” on the church. Bondi said two other people had also been arrested, including Jamael Lundy, a candidate for the Minnesota State Senate.

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Last Saturday, I received an email from the Children’s Theatre Company of Minnesota. They explained that they were canceling the weekend’s performances of Go, Dog. Go! “for the safety of our patrons, staff, and artists.” Earlier that morning, federal agents had killed Alex Pretti in the streets, about nine blocks away from the theater’s doors.

The tickets were a Christmas gift to my four-year-old daughter from her grandparents. She has never been to the theater before. In the ever-expanding list of consequences from ICE’s violent occupation of the Twin Cities metro area, this disappointment hardly merits a mention. But it still made me sad, because — as any parent could probably tell you — all I want for my kid is joy, and so much of the world that surrounds her right now is confusion and fear and pain.

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The day Alex Pretti was shot 10 times in the street by federal agents, I was delivering a eulogy for my grandfather, who died the way we’re supposed to: old, asleep, surrounded by family. Because it’s my job to coordinate visuals for this website, I locked myself in a bathroom stall, watched a video of the shooting twice, and emailed a photographer, asking if he could get onto the streets and start documenting what was happening in Minneapolis.

As I reviewed photos of protesters and tear gas in the wake of his death, I didn’t realize, in the hours before his name was released to the public, that the man millions of people had seen lying facedown on the pavement from multiple angles of eyewitness video was my childhood best friend.

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Shortly after federal agents killed Alex Pretti Saturday morning, the Department of Homeland Security began to run with the story that the dead man had been armed and dangerous. He had a gun, DHS said. (A Bellingcat analysis of the video concludes that Pretti was unarmed when he was shot.) He had approached the agents holding the gun, DHS said. (He was holding a phone, The New York Times reports.) Pretti died on his knees, surrounded by armed Border Patrol agents, with shot after shot unloaded in his direction.

America’s Second Amendment is beloved by conservatives. Minnesota allows open carry with a permit. Pretti lived in a city where people are regularly being assaulted and even killed by the masked and armed men he was busy observing. So why has so much ink been spilled over the minutiae of his behavior? Why is it so normal for law enforcement — those who are supposed to be keepers of law and order — to kill Americans? And why is the only question at the end of the day how much their victims deserved to die?

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Americans do not like masked secret police. There is really no other way to put it. The reasons why are manifold: accountability, trust in law enforcement, and just plain overall vibes. More concretely, not being able to tell who’s a cop and who’s not is dangerous. An assassin masquerading as law enforcement killed Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband last year. How is anyone supposed to tell whether they’re being dragged out of their home in their underwear by ICE or by mere amateur thugs?

Last year, California passed the No Secret Police Act, which restricts masking for federal law enforcement, alongside the No Vigilantes Act, which requires law enforcement to wear some form of identification. The Department of Homeland Security immediately sued to enjoin the law on constitutional grounds; a judge has not yet ruled on whether to grant a preliminary injunction.

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Steven Garcia, as told to Gaby Del Valle:

I was in the middle of a frozen lake when I got the notification from The Minnesota Star Tribune that there had been a shooting. I was on assignment at a pond hockey event, and someone who was supposed to play later that evening said he probably wouldn’t be able to make it — they knew there would be protests and demonstrations happening.

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I live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE agents stretches into its third week — with no clear end in sight — I’ve received a steady string of messages from increasingly concerned friends across the country. They all start the same way: Uh… is this really as bad as it looks from the outside?

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As masked and armed men in combat armor swarmed throughout the Twin Cities, Gov. Tim Walz took to primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The videos, he said, would “create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans — not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.”

While the feds besieged hospitals and school bus stops and Targets, Walz imagined a future with something akin to the Nuremberg trials. His speech emphasized the legal system and the ballot box, a promise of peaceful regime change and a process of accountability. And it was as much emotional solace for his constituents as it was a demonstration for the courts. Minnesota is not in insurrection, Minnesota is not in revolt, Minnesota will follow the law — so, will the law now protect Minnesota?

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Just a day after publishing a 40-minute video alleging fraud at Minnesota daycare centers, Nick Shirley had the vice president’s attention.

In Shirley’s video, he and another man identified only as “David” roam Minneapolis with cameras and microphones, demanding entrance to daycare centers they say are operated by members of the local Somali community. With scant evidence, Shirley accuses the centers of sweeping fraud, tying it to previous federal fraud cases pursued by Joe Biden’s administration in Minnesota. The men knock on doors, argue with workers who refuse them entry, and conduct man-on-the-street-style interviews, asking people if they’ve ever seen children at the centers.

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